Ghostbusters LDN
by Dr Stanz
Summary: Weird stuff is happening all over London, someone has to deal with it, who you gonna call? A Paranormal Investigator bites off more than she can chew and has to go into business with an oddly named odd job man, a pair of engineers who love tabletop war games and an enthusiastic young woman with something to prove, all while being toyed with by a mischievous earthbound god.
1. Chapter 1

Description and disclaimer by author:

This is a fan fiction based in the Ghostbusters universe as created by Ivan Reitman, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis. It is borrowing from the lore of that universe and takes place in the current era. Characters are also borrowed from other works and I make no claim to be their creator and use them with respect. This is intended to have the same mix of humour and light horror elements as the work on which it is based however there is strong gore, occasional strong language and occasional adult themes and reader discretion is advised. Resemblance of characters to persons living or dead is unintentional and coincidental. Use of historical figures is meant respectfully. Seriously. I would not want to piss off the ghost of Ronnie Kray.

Ghostbusters: LDN

James Wing

2016

Prologue

April 3rd 7.34am – Disraeli Manor, Buckinghamshire, England

Not many things could scare Mason. After a brief foray in 2004 into the land of the dead courtesy of a round fired from a sniper rifle at 200 meters that had left him with nothing but a nice relaxing coma and a strange dream about playing chess with a hooded skeleton, he'd taken life itself a lot less seriously. As far as he was concerned, if it wasn't about to tear him limb from limb, it probably wasn't worth being scared of, which is why he didn't think much of his labourer's gossip of voices, apparitions and other odd occurrences like books falling off shelves in the library and pots and pans clattering loudly from the cupboards onto the floor in the kitchens just before people walked in. One of the things that did bother him though was all the thieving.

While everyone else at the Disraeli manor refurbishment, including some of the resident caretakers, were convinced that things going missing were disappearing into another realm, Mason took a more rational stance. He believed there was a thief amongst them. Some of the missing items weren't worth thinking about, screw drivers and hammers got lost all the time, but power tools like drills and circular saws, they were pricey enough to get his attention.

He'd been managing the site for about 2 weeks, having taken over the project half way through its completion. The manor had once been a grand stately home, built on the site of a medieval castle in the 1600's and expanded upon and renamed after Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli in 1899, it had played guest to many of English history's greatest faces, Queen Victoria herself included, but after the bankruptcy of its then owner in 1947, it had been handed over to the people of Buckinghamshire as a National Trust garden and museum open to the public. That was until last year when it had been purchased by rich American property developer, Phillip Hudson, who'd decided it was going to be turned into a grand house again for the bargain price of £150 million.

Mason had locked and secured every door and window in the building on every floor. He'd been pedantic about it. He'd ensured that he was the only one left on site while he did it too; just to be sure that nobody went around undoing any window latches behind him. It had taken him about 90 minutes he reckoned to scour every inch of the manor, including the basement, cellar and attics. Nobody could have got it without either the main door key, which he knew there was only one of as he had installed the lock himself, or breaking to enter. He'd been this thorough because things had been stolen and he wanted to prove that there was nothing supernatural about it. All the expensive equipment that belonged to the company was placed in the main hall. Drills, transformers, circular saws, radios, mixers, tile cutters and various other power tools were neatly stacked on top of three pallets of plasterboard in the main hall. All were checked off on a list by Mason personally just before he walked out and locked the door.

That was at 7.51pm the night before. He was the first one in; nobody was even waiting outside yet. No vans were parked up, no music was playing, not even the birds seemed to be singing, the day, it seemed, had yet to start at all. He turned the key in the lock and heard the satisfying clunk of the metal bolt retracting, then moved inside to check off all the tools.

He raised his clipboard, scribbled the pen in the top corner to get the ink flowing, and then looked over to the pallets.

Shit.

Nothing. Not even the stuff that wasn't worth stealing, all he'd been left with was 3 stacks of plasterboard, the top ones of which had scratches all over them from where the tools had been sat.

 _101 . . . Dialling . . ._ The policewoman he was speaking to asked Mason to describe to her, one at a time, what tools were missing. As he described the first, a Black and Dekker cordless drill, there was a loud bang behind him. Startled, he'd turned to find that exact drill on the floor a few feet behind him. It was broken, the hardened plastic shattered around the base where it had clearly hit the wooden floor hard enough to chip into the 150 year old wood, and since he was filing an insurance claim for the items, as confused as he was, he continued to list the items. The next one, a Makita DAB radio, also landed with a thud on the wooden floor, bouncing slightly thanks to its rubberised corners, tumbling end over end to the base of the stairs. He stopped and looked up.

It took a moment for Mason to take in what he was seeing. For starters, he didn't even believe what he was seeing. Seemingly glued to the ceiling were all of the tools that he was trying to report stolen. Dozens of them. Most of them rather heavy. Some of them lethal if dropped from a height of, say, 15 feet. A height at which they were indeed seemingly magically suspended.

" _. . . Sir?_ " The policewoman tried to reignite the discourse between them which had ended abruptly when Mason had started staring in confusion at the ceiling. " _Sir, do you have a clear mobile signal?_ "

A large bag full of tools and nails thudded loudly on the decking, screws and nails scattering all over the floor. Mason lowered the phone from his mouth and held his hand over the mouthpiece.

He shouted angrily up the stairs, though he wasn't sure who to. "Whatever you think you're doing, I'm going to fuck you up when I find you, proper hurt you, I swear to god!"

" _Sir?_ "

He felt the cold rush through his body. A cold he knew only too well and which his mind had forced from his memory until this shocking reminder, one that reminded him of his death; a sudden and painful jolt of paralyzing cold. As his mind struggled to cope with the feeling the rest of his senses were quickly taken up with the rumbling and shaking of the floor at his feet, the rushing of air through the halls, the doors all slamming in the ferocious breeze, the chilling guttural growl that was building in volume and seemed to emanate from the walls themselves. The growl raised in pitch before moulding itself into harshly screamed words.

" _**. . . PAIN . . . YOU SHAL KNOW PAIN! . . .**_ "

The shaking, the wind, the noise all stopped, giving a very quick and unnerving sense of false calm to Mason just before the remainder of the tools all crashed down in the main hall, smashing most of them to scrap metal and much of the original flooring to pieces.

He stumbled around the mess in a frantic scramble for the main door, ran down the stone steps to his van and tripped, slamming himself onto the bonnet and sending his plastic hard hat flying over to the gravel on the other side. He couldn't help but notice the 12" plasterer's trough, the sharp corner of which was embedded in the top of the hat. He gasped for breath, his lungs seemingly not having taken a breath since he started running.

" _Sir, I'm getting a bad signal, if you can hear this please respond or I'll have to terminate this call._ "

His hand had nearly crushed his phone. He could still hear the speaker in the now dead silence. He held it back up to his ear.

"You guys don't happen to do hauntings, do you?"

Part 1

Chapter 1

Fear Itself

April 4th 2.20pm - Disraeli Manor

As a rather overweight spider's scrambling legs clawed across her face, jamming the tips of themselves tightly into her eyes and lips, Sandy Gray had to stop and compose herself, taking deep breaths, so as not to panic and bring down the worryingly unstable roof of the crawlspace. She swatted the spider away from her face, but in the dark it was impossible to tell if it was gone or just hanging on by a silk thread, waiting to strike again.

"You ok?" The voice of Harry, one of the labourers called from the end of the tunnel, where she'd entered a few moments ago.

"Fine." She called back.

She wasn't fine. She was pretty damn far from fine, but now wasn't the time to turn back. It had been a 3 hour drive from her flat in Romford to the Disraeli estate, so she needed to at least do what she'd come for just to pay for the fuel. She crept on. Bits of crumbling brickwork, dead insects and rat droppings crunched under her gloved hands, her head torch illuminating nothing but fine dust a few feet in front of her. Around 20 yards into the tunnel, it branched off at right angles to the left and right. She took a super-bright LED torch that was in a loop on her belt and used that to shine down, but on neither side did it reach the end. Her muffled breaths through the dust mask were the only sounds she could hear, until a gentle gust of air breezed from the right. As the air glided past her ear, she felt a chill and trembled as she heard a low moan.

"Did you hear that?!" She yelled back to Harry, who she presumed was still at the entrance.

There was no answer. She turned to look, but apart from the now distant light at the end, saw nothing. She listened for a moment . . . the bastard had left her. They called her, specifically taking their god-damn time to read a tiny advert in the yellow bloody pages, dragged her to the arse end of nowhere and then just left her to it. Cocks.

Her advert wasn't even all that outstanding, though she had noted that it was the only one of its kind, offering her services as a paranormal investigator. She never claimed to be able to eliminate a haunting, but that's what the renovating company were expecting. In fact, when she showed up on her own in a rusted Ford Fiesta with a torch and some sample jars, the foreman asked her what exactly she intended to do. She blagged that she had to check out the disturbance before deciding what action to take, then they left her alone to explore.

The Disraeli manor was a lot bigger than she'd expected with dozens of rooms and lots of hidden walkways and secret passages. Until a few years ago it had been a National Trust home for the public to visit and there were still red velvet ropes on the walkways keeping people from the displays of suits of armour and stuffed animals.

The foreman, Mason, gave her a basic heads up as to why he'd called her. It was creepy, he didn't even seem to want to tell her what he'd seen, which made her all the more curious. So far in her career she was yet to see convincing evidence of anything above class 3 apparitions, but this sounded closer to a class 5 poltergeist or even an animator, maybe even an infestation of some kind of gremlin or other semi-physical malevolent entity. She was intrigued to say the least.

She cracked a glow stick and placed it at the cross section, then crawled along to the right. As she did so, she knocked a piece of wood from the corner. The tunnel was brick lined with wood covering the ceiling and wooden posts along the walls helping to support it. It had such bad dry rot though that the wood beams crumbled when squeezed. Some brick and mortar dust tumbled out from where the post had fallen but there was no cave in. Relieved, she kept moving.

The house was littered with these crawl spaces, especially the older parts of it. How and why they were used could have been any number of reasons, but usually old features like these were escape routes or for the smuggling in or out of goods or persons who probably shouldn't have been there. They'd all been walled off over the years but in the recent work a few had been uncovered. Sandy took EMF readings all over the manor and some of the highest readings had come from the entrance to this crawlspace. The deeper she'd gone, the stronger the reading, it seemed like a no-brainer. This was one of the oldest parts of the manor, which wasn't particularly reassuring when it appeared ready to collapse around her. She was also over some of the foundations for the castle that had stood for centuries before the manor was built. In fact, she stopped to think for a moment, she was right above the cellar, which had at one point been a dungeon. Nice thought.

A few more feet in and Sandy decided to do another EVP recording. She clicked on the Dictaphone to record and waited a few seconds before hitting playback. She turned the volume all the way up and listened carefully. There was nothing but laboured breathing, she assumed her own but couldn't be certain. It sounded heavier, more like it was coming from an open mouth than her tightly clenched lips. It was inconclusive though, so she turned off the recorder and stuck it back in her pocket.

Another moan. Deeper, harsher, whatever it was, it was making sure she knew it was there. It didn't want her to think it was just something in her head. It was real. It was interacting with her. She hadn't come across something like that since the Hell Fire Caves 3 years ago. Clipped to her chest on her tactical vest was a protective case for her most expensive piece of equipment. Sandy unzipped the case and took out the device, carefully unfolding the handle and extending the antenna. She'd taken great care of it, having spent over £1,100 getting it made to exact specifications by an engineer that she'd met at a robotics expo. She'd even kept the plastic screen protector on it. It took a moment to power up, in which time there was a gust of wind again, followed by a deep, guttural growl.

It knew what she was doing. If there was one thing she'd realised, it was that they don't like to be quantified. Her entire field of study actively went to great lengths to avoid being studied. But then, if it was easy, she probably wouldn't have a job. The light from the screen illuminated her face, blinding her entirely and irritating her already dust filled eyes. The screen went black for a moment and then came up with a series of bars. All of them were red, all of them were high, and the meter began beeping excessively.

" _Oh shit, oh shit . . . oh shit._ " Sandy whispered quietly to herself.

This was not a common reading. A common reading would likely be low green bars. The highest she'd seen had been around half way up the scale and orange. Red wasn't a colour she was used to seeing the device turn. On the top of the screen was a compass with a single red arrow on it, showing the rough direction of the source of the signal. She followed it and kept crawling forward, following the psychokinetic energy readings.

Out of nowhere a loud noise caused her to panic, attempt to stand, and smash her back into a beam, causing it to crumble. Acting on instinct she rushed forward to avoid the tunnel overhead collapsing. In the mad scramble she hit her head on another beam, which thankfully, was also soft and rotting. She heard the tunnel collapsing behind her brick by brick and she tried to dash forwards. The dust was in her eyes and she couldn't see anything. The P.K.E. in her left hand was beeping even more intensely. Then she reached out with her right hand, expecting to find more brick dust and rat shit, but instead, there was nothing. Her forward momentum caused her to collapse onto her chest as her right hand plunged into water. The collapse had finished, it was localised to the area just behind where her feet currently were.

The dust mask couldn't keep it all out and she was coughing loudly. She stayed still for what felt to her like an hour, but was closer to 4 minutes. As the dust settled she found the water was part of a drainage duct. It was flowing very slowly. There was nowhere to go but either follow it down, or follow it up, and the P.K.E. meter said up.

In her confusion she hadn't recognised the noise, but now she knew what it was. Her phone had gone off. She'd gotten her precious P.K.E. meter wet and muddy, and maybe even scratched, all for some ass hole phoning her. How it was working underground, she wasn't sure, but she decided to check it before risking getting it soaking wet.

The voicemail tone binged as she unlocked it. An unknown number. Nobody phoned her at the best of times. Then she thought, maybe it was one of the builders. She checked the voicemail.

" _You have a new message and zero saved messages. New messages. *beep* . . . . . . g o . . . . ccrrrrrrkkkkk . . . . . . . . . . hell is HEREcccrrrkrkrkrrrr . . . To return the call, press one. To repeat, press two, to delete . . ._ " Sandy hung up the phone. Shaking, she switched it off and placed it back in her pocket. She tried to swallow but her mouth was dry.

Splash, splash, slosh, her crawling in the inch high water in the brick drain was the only thing keeping her calm enough to function as she followed the readings deeper into the tunnels. The further she crawled the higher the spikes went on the P.K.E. and the tighter the walls and lower the ceiling seemed to get.

She doubled checked that it was calibrated properly. It was reading level 10. As far as she knew, the last time anyone had recorded a level 10 was the guys themselves in New York back in '99. If this was right, she was onto something big. And given that she wasn't as prepared for something big, either mentally or logistically, as the New Yorkers were, that was making her all the more nervous. She wondered if it would be ok to wet herself. She was already covered in water, and she was in an old sewer.

That moment of silent and pleasantly distracting contemplation ceased when the P.K.E. readings dropped from 10 back down to 0. Background readings only. Whatever was there was gone. Except . . .

Sandy looked around. Grasping her ankle with its bony left hand was a skeleton. She screamed, dropping the P.K.E. meter into the water and twisting so as to face the bones. As she did so the hand and arm that were around her ankle shattered and the lifeless skull dropped so as to be half submerged into the water. She screamed until her lungs were empty, staring at it, half expecting it to move. It didn't. She grabbed the P.K.E. meter and shook it. It was soaked and wasn't going to be working any time soon since she'd cracked the screen. She zipped it into its case and carried on crawling, this time faster, with the soul hope of getting out before anything else freaky happened.

Crawling as fast as she could, she made a lot of splashing noise, but it wasn't enough to cover up the growl. It was letting her know it was still there and that she had to keep going, get out, let it rest, leave it be. She saw light ahead coming in through a barred grate over the drain. She grabbed the bars and pushed but they didn't budge. She looked through, about 25 feet up there was wire mesh. She tried to make sense of it, then realised that she'd made it to the old castle pit. Stone walls made a cylindrical pit where in the past they would have thrown prisoners to die.

She called out for help as loudly as she could but there was no reply. She tried to feel around for a bolt or a lock or whatever it was holding the bars down and eventually found an old padlock. Not medieval old, but still rusty and looking as though it could be broken. Sandy always kept a multi tool on her belt and unfolded the hacksaw blade. Reaching through the bars with both hands to hold it steady she started to saw it. It felt like it was taking forever but she could see that she was making progress and eventually it was weak enough for her to smash open with the butt of her torch.

Sandy swung the small barred hatch open and prepared herself to climb out when she felt a warm breath on her neck. She paused.

Terrified and shaking, she said "I'm not scared of you."

There was a pause as a ghostly hand grasped her right shoulder, tightly digging long and sharp fingernails into her skin, her hair lifted to expose her ear to the hot, stinking breath, then an old and cracked voice spoke. " _Fear will be the only thing you will have left to know._ "

She grabbed the sides of the hole and pulled herself up, kicking away loose stones as she clambered out and the very second her feet cleared the hole she screamed at the top of her voice. She slammed the cover shut as though it would offer some protection, then backed up against a wall, staring at the hole and continuing to scream hysterically.

"Hey!" A guy in a hard hat and high-vis shouted down to her. "How the hell did you get in there?"

Sandy stopped screaming, collapsed into a foetal position on the floor and waited for them to get her out as she wept and told herself it was all just the spirits playing mind games. At least, she hoped that was what they were.


	2. Chapters 2 and 3

Chapter 2

Robot Wars

April 4th 7.37pm – High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire

"Ahem! Attention please gentlemen!" Snow announced before holding his mic in the air and tapping it with his other hand to create a 'boof'ing noise from the large speakers behind him.

The crowd of 23 nerds stopped chatting and looked his way into the centre of the arena in the basement of the Mosquito Inn.

"Since it appears everyone is here, we may as well get the first round started. The first battle will be between Pete Clarkson's 'Crushernator' and the Murphy brother's 'Scorpion 2'. Gentlemen, start your robots!"

The crowd clapped rather civilly as Clarkson placed the Crushernator into the 15 foot wide ring made of black tyres. Ryan and his brother T.J. both needed to lower the Scorpion 2 into the ring carefully, not because it was too heavy, but because due to a design flaw that they'd been arguing about for 2 nights, the chassis was too weak to support its weight unless all 4 sets of tracks were on the ground or being otherwise supported. It was however much too late to worry about that now, as they were about to face Clarkson's pink behemoth, a 2 foot high remote controlled sledge hammer.

That's not to say the Scorp wasn't heavily armed, it had a high powered pneumatic battering ram that could punch holes in breeze blocks, and thanks to a pivot between the 4 sets of tracks it had excellent manoeuvrability.

"We should win this." Ryan said to his brother, hopefully.

"Neeeyyyyaaaaa . . ." T.J. didn't really share his confidence as the hammer took a test swing and chipped the oil and flamethrower stained concrete floor.

Snow held the mic up close to his face so the bass of the last word would shake the floor, "Three, Two, One, ACTIVATE!"

Before Ryan had a chance to steer left, the Crushernator had sped forward and timed a hammer strike perfectly so that its forward momentum would give the hammer a little extra oomph, just enough in fact to decimate the front right set of tracks. T.J. activated the ram but all it did was glance the corner of its opponent, denting some bodywork and sending a couple of bolts flying. While he was recalling it for another strike, the hammer landed on the top of the cannon, buckling it and disabling the ram altogether. A couple more strikes hit the machine before T.J. threw in the towel. Literally, landing a small white towel on the now smoking mess of a machine.

"Robots, cease!" Snow shouted.

Clarkson reversed his nearly unscathed robot back to his starting position.

"Well, well, well lads," Said Snow, "Scorpion 1 appears to have a new friend in robot heaven tonight. That makes Pete our first round winner!"

Ryan and T.J. lifted what was left of Scorpion 2 from the arena and onto the trolley before wheeling it to the cellar lift, which took them out to the carpark.

"We need more speed." Ryan suggested.

"Well it would be faster, Ry, if you didn't insist on two sets of tracks."

"Its designed to look like a UNSC Scorpion, it has to have two sets."

"But it's supposed to be designed to win! There's not much good in entering something that looks cool if it's going to get hammered! Literally, in this case!"

Before Ryan could retort, his phone rang. "Hello?"

" _Hi, is that Ryan Murphy?_ "

"Yes it is . . . who's this?"

" _My name is Sandy Gray, I don't know if you remember me but you did some work for me earlier this year, putting together a psychokinetic energy reader._ "

Had they been in a cartoon, £ symbols would have rolled in Ryan's eyes. He grinned. "Yes I do remember. How's that working out for you?"

" _It's broke._ "

"Umm, yeah, I . . . it was working when I gave it to you."

" _No, I mean I broke it. I need it fixed; I was hoping you could help me._ "

"Uh, yeah sure. I mean, I'm kind of busy right now." He said, kicking the dead heap of metal by his feet. "But if you can make it worth my while I should be able to squeeze you into my schedule."

" _Oh of course! Thanks so much. When can I come to your workshop?_ "

"Hold on." Ryan covered the mic on his phone. "T.J., are we doing anything tomorrow?"

T.J. Sighed. "By anything, I assume you mean anything apart from playing Warhammer and drinking Fosters? No, not really."

"Let me check my diary, hold on." Ryan paused for dramatic effect as he inspected his fingers, wiping the grease from the robot onto his overalls. "Yeah, looks like I can move some stuff aside and make room for you at around 12 tomorrow, is that cool?"

" _You're a lifesaver, thank you so much!_ "

"No problem, see you then." He hung up. "Yes! Paid work." He said, offering T.J. a fist-pump, which he reluctantly accepted.

Chapter 3

White Van Man

April 5th 10.12am – Uxbridge, Greater London

With Black Sabbath blasting out of his paint covered radio, Will Careterro was hurriedly trying to finish installing a power shower before the Newcastle Vs Spurs kick off at 1pm. He referred to himself on the sides of his once white 1991 Ford Transit as a general handyman, but wisely, didn't actually make the claim that he was a qualified plumber. Despite that fact, people still phoned him to do kitchens and bathrooms, and he felt no need to mention that when it came to plumbing, he wasn't always 100% sure what went where.

His iPhone with the broken screen was on the bathroom windowsill when it started to ring. Carefully, with one hand still holding up the shower, he stretched out and got the phone just before it vibrated itself over the edge.

"Careterro, for when D.I.Y. won't do."

" _Hey, it's me. Remember that hot goth-type girl you were asking me about?_ "

"Rachel?"

" _No, the ghost hunter._ "

"What, the one that was in those Lara Croft shorts with the big tits?"

" _That's her. You said to let you know if she's back this way, well she's coming to mine at 12._ "

"Alright if I watch the game at yours?"

" _Game?_ "

"You know, football. The game you don't play with a keyboard or dice."

" _Oh, right, yeah sure. See you later._ "

Spurred on by the thought of seeing those juicy juggs again, Careterro picked up the pace, put down the drill and picked up the hammer.

April 5th 11.55am – High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire

Thankfully for Sandy, High Wycombe was on the way back from the manor house, so she could stop in and get her P.K.E. fixed before going home. She wasn't expecting to stay away overnight so she looked a state, her hair in a mess, her face still dirty from the tunnels, her clothes messy and in some places still damp. It had been a two hour rescue attempt involving three builders removing the mesh cover of the pit and a team from Fire and Rescue coming down on a ladder to get her out. The moment she was saved however, she found herself being checked over by a paramedic as she was questioned by police. It seemed quite a few 'safe working practices' had been ignored in letting her on site, let alone in the unsecured crawl spaces. She'd been allowed in with nobody on site qualified in confined spaces rescue, and to top it off, while she was waiting to be cut out, she'd mentioned the skeleton in the tunnels, so there were now human remains to deal with too. A forensics team were called in to check it out and apparently found nothing, so she could have been nicked for wasting police time too, but was let off due to her emotional distress. She was ordered to report to the local station to fill out an endless barrage of forms, some of which she was sure were duplicates that they couldn't be bothered to photocopy, before being allowed to go. By that time she was too tired to drive home and fell asleep in the back of the car.

She still had the voicemail and she'd called O2 to find out if they had any record of who'd left it, but they informed her that they had no record of anyone calling her at that time, and that they couldn't explain why she had a message marked at that time. With no other lines of enquiry and a strong desire to never go back there alone, she just wanted to get her equipment fixed and go home for a bath.

She pulled up behind a formerly white van with a crudely drawn ejaculating penis etched into the muck of its back doors, took the P.K.E. meter from the glovebox and headed up the steps to Murphy's house.


End file.
